Not a Lost Cause
by Queen of Jacks
Summary: It's been four months since Fred died and George needs to be healed. Can Angelina Johnson help?


It had been four months. Four. Yet George Weasley still hadn't gotten off the stupid couch he had insisted upon six months earlier with his late twin, Fred. Had it really been just six months ago? George could have sworn it had been a lifetime ago. In many ways, it had.

Ginevra Weasley, standing just outside the door, pounded upon it. "George! George, open up this bloody door right now or I swear I'll blast it down!"

Taking pity on the young, vivid-haired witch, and elderly old lady hobbled out of her apartment door next to his. The old lady's name was Aileen Gray and she had seen, when George had first moved in four months ago, him hide a silver key under the potted plant beside the door that had never seemed to open again.

Ginny looked up upon her arrival and smiled sheepishly. The old lady bent down without a word and pulled the key from under the plant with difficulty and handed it to Ginny. "Sorry, honey, but I don't think he's home." She hadn't seen or heard anything from that apartment since he moved in. Occasionally, someone would stop by and pound on the door, eventually give it up as a lost cause and leave, shoulders drooped. All of them seemed to have the same exact shade of preposterous red hair. However, there was something about this young witch that Aileen had never seen before and she didn't think that she would leave without a good fight. And Aileen did like her rest, you know.

"Oh, he's home," Ginny said. The old lady wanted to ask how she knew, how she was so sure but decided it wasn't any of her business.

Giving a terse nod, the old lady prepared to leave. Ginny hesitated slightly as Ms. Gray reached her door and said, "Thank-you."

Shoving the key in the lock, Ginny banged the door open. George didn't even have the decency to jump. He turned his head slowly as if it could have been anyone standing there and he wouldn't have cared.

As much as Ginny would have wanted to jump at him and pummel him for the pain he was causing their mother and the worry he was causing their father and brothers, in that moment, all she wanted to do was hug his pathetically sad self. "George?" she asked. It was hard to tell, he hadn't obviously shaved in days and his pyjamas hung off his too skinny body. He didn't look like her George. He also didn't ask how she got in his apartment.

Sighing slightly, he said, "What?" Though his voice was flat and emotionless, there was also a rough quality about it that suggested that he hadn't used it in quite some time.

Ginny wasn't sure what to say and stalling for time, she looked around. In front of the closed window were piles of unopened letters, the garbage in the corner was overfilled and reeked of spoiled eggs, there were various items such as clothes, pizza boxes, shoes, broken glass and Puking Pastilles that littered the floor.

"How are you?" she finally said. She hadn't seen him since a week after Fred died, when he decided to take a few things to move to a cheap apartment building for some time because he couldn't stand living in the flat above the temporary closed joke shop that belonged to both him and Fred. He said he needed space.

"Bloody fantastic," he muttered hoarsely.

Ginny stepped over a few things and opened the refrigerator. She was pretty sure this was where Muggles kept their food. Indeed, it had a few left over pizza boxes and a sour carton of milk. She walked over to the bathroom; it was in no better condition as the rest of the house. She opened the sole drawer in the pitiful little room. It had an old hairbrush and an almost empty bottle of toothpaste. Shaking her head, she turned to the shower; it had a quarter full bottle of shampoo and a disturbing bar of soap. Ginny wrinkled her nose and continued on to the single bedroom. It was empty save for one medium-sized box labeled _WWW_. She supposed he had been sleeping on the couch.

She walked back into the living room. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"No."

An hour and a half later, after conjuring some soup from The Burrow and practically forcing it down George's throat, she set out to Diagon Alley for some supplies for George, making sure to bring the silver key with her. In Middie's All Day Supplies shop, she piled high on toothpaste, a new blue toothbrush, soap, a comb, man's deodorant, man's shaving cream, a few loose T- Shirts (green, brown and beige ones), underwear in a size she hoped would fit, edible food, a few pots and pans and a cactus. Sure, the cactus was a little random but she hoped to liven the place up a bit. She also bought a few more blankets and a proper pillow as she noticed earlier that he didn't have one.

On her way to the checkout, she ran into Angelina Johnson. Literally.

"I'm so sorry! I wasn't paying attention to where I was going!" Angelina panted. She seemed to have run around the corner for no apparent reason other than just the heck of it. "Ginny?"

"Angelina?" Angelina nodded. "Oh, hey."

"H- um, hey," she looked slightly caught off guard as she noticed the items in Ginny's cart.

"They're for George," Ginny explained.

"George? How is he? I've sent him so many letters and he hasn't replied to one. Not one! Is he okay? Oh, I hope so. I went by the shop, but he wasn't there. Ron told me moved out. Where is he now?" Angelina said it all so fast that Ginny had a hard time keeping up with her.

"He isn't good. I just saw him at his place in Waffle's Bay, the Muggle town. He hasn't replied to anyone's letters. He's really depressed," Ginny sighed. "I've got to go bring him some things and I'm already late for dinner at The Burrow. I was supposed to invite George to go to, but I know he won't come." She frowned.

"Can I take them for you? I haven't seen George in ages?" Angelina asked hopefully. It would be nice to see George again, she thought.

"Well… I don't know. He's not exactly warm towards company," Ginny bit her lip. "Oh, all right. Here's the key," she handed her the small silver key. "Invite him to The Burrow and you too, will you? The apartment building is Maple Boxes, number twenty-seven. And Angelina," she paused, "good luck."

Ten minutes later, Angelina was Apparating, along with six bags of seemingly worthless objects, to the corner around Maple Boxes Apartment Buildings. After huffing into the building and running up two flights of stairs because the elevator was broken, Angelina reached number twenty-seven.

She figured, though she had the key, that she ought to knock first as a common courtesy. When George didn't come to the door, she narrowed her eyes angrily and pulled out the key. Ginny had warned her that she would need it.

Angelina shoved noisily at the door and stepped inside the depressing shit-hole. George was still sitting on the couch, now looking at an old picture of himself and Fred outside of a newly-opened Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. She wasn't all that shocked to see tears in his droopy eyes. He looked up as she entered then did a double-take.

This time he looked surprised but he didn't say anything.

"Ginny sent me," she murmured. She was still shocked at his muggy appearance. "George? _George?_" He acted like he couldn't hear and glaring slightly, she, unlike Ginny, couldn't handle the mess in the apartment. With one final glare, she began to clean. It took only twenty minutes but eventually the mess was less mess-like. It was a start. Angelina put away the things Ginny had bought and walked back over to George who had remained silent as he watched her clean.

"George? Ginny told me to invite you to The Burrow for her? Will you go? Please?" she begged. Great, now he wouldn't even _look_ at her. "Georgie? Please? Talk to me."

He didn't say anything, just stood up and made his way towards the kitchen. Fed up, Angelina leaned forward and grabbed him roughly by the pyjama top. "Now, you listen to me, George Gideon Weasley. I know what this is about and you really need to stop this. Did you see how worried Ginny is? _Did you?_ Because I did. And you're the only one who can help!" she fumed.

Though he felt a slight twinge of guilt at hearing of making Gin-Gin worried, George felt himself get angry. "You know? What do you know? He's gone. He's _gone,_ Angelina!" Angelina didn't need to ask who he was talking about. "He was my brother, my best friend and he's… he's…"

Angelina took a deep breath and did the only thing that came to mind. She slapped him. Hard.

"Stop feeling sorry for yourself. You think this is what he wanted? You to be cowardly? Your family needs you, George. Now get your sorry ass in the shower. And make sure you shave. I'll wait here. You have twenty-five minutes. _Go_." He looked at her, stunned as she glared at him. It didn't even occur to him to disobey.

Fifteen minutes later, for he was slightly afraid of getting slapped again (the first one had hurt but also seemed to have awaken him somehow), he pulled on a pair of Muggle khakis and the dark green shirt Ginny had bought him. It fit him nicely, Angelina couldn't help but think.

George tugged Angelina's hand into his and Apparated outside The Burrow at the Apparating point. He was slightly nervous at seeing his family again. Angelina knocked on the door as George stared, apparently transfixed, at a small bout of weeds in the garden.

The door flung open to reveal a plump, kind-faced woman standing there. Angelina smiled, "Hi, Mrs Weasley." She had met Molly four years ago on Platform 9 and 3/4. "I brought a present." Grabbing George's arm, she tugged him closer.

"George!" Molly shrieked.

Everyone sitting around the table looked up. There was Ginny, sitting between Harry Potter and Fleur, Hermione Granger, sitting beside Ron, Bill and Charlie sitting by Arthur and Percy with a brown-haired witch George vaguely recognized as Audrey Jones, a Muggle-born who had helped test several WWW products.

As everyone gathered around George to greet him, George smiled for the first time in months.

In that moment, George Weasley started to heal. The hole that had opened up in his heart grew smaller and smaller though he never forgot Fred. He wasn't sure what healed him most; if it was his supportive family, the son and daughter he eventually gained or the joke shop in which he reopened. But he knew what healed him first. The slap he got the day Angelina Johnson, eventually Weasley, gave him the very first day she ever visited his apartment.

She was his saviour.

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**_HGRH_**


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